In this episode I'm going to look at the ender 3 v2 which is fast becoming one of the most
popular printers on the market, I think, at least if reddit is anything to go by!
What about the ender 3 v2?
Well...let's get right into it.
Credit for finding this goes to our discord member Mandrake, who has been warned that
the press will be hounding him for further comments as a result of the exposure here,
but he was not dissuaded from being mentioned.
Thank you mandrake for telling me about this baffling discovery.
Pun intended.
Maybe.
And also, as usual, I have shown myself to be inexperienced with electrical stuff before,
especially AC electrics, so anything that follows is not advice, consult someone who
is qualified, everything that follows is just discovery and experimentation and not advice
on how you should modify your printer, you get the idea.
Don't touch what you don't understand.
So - Ender 3 v2 is a bit of a mouthful so I think it's probably worth just calling the
printer the e3-2 for the duration of this video.
It was that or Steve, I mean, we could go with steve..if you want.
Anyway, here's my steve, and he is looking pretty disgusting, which is weird, I actually
cleaned this up a couple of weeks ago, imagine how bad it was before.
Anyway let's flip steve over and have a look at his bottom.
I'm just going to point to stuff and name it, so this is the part where the control
board is, with a noisy annoying fan that comes on any time the printer is on.
This is the drawer.
Literally it's just the drawer.
And this is the power supply intake.
And this is the power supply outlet.
Yes I said this is the power supply outlet.
No really, this is the power supply outlet.
Let me take this cover off, and we'll see if I'm mad or not.
Just a bunch of screws to get this thing out really.
And I'm not concerned about a shock hazard, but don't try this at home with the power
on, because the live terminals going to the psu are exposed, although the internals aren't.
So, yeah, do you see the issue here?
Nope seems absolutely fine.
I'm not going to either pretend I have the expertise to comment on this objectively,
or make a huge exasperated deal about it.
The simple matter of fact is that I know of no reports of any overheating power supplies
in these machines at all.
Couple of tests I did, you can put paper over the inlet and it will pull it towards the
machine, so there is air going in.
I also did this extremely safe test here where I put it up on a pile of PLA filament with
a db meter underneath.
This is with the stock psu cover on.
I printed for a while, and the fan kicks in pretty soon after starting and hits 74dbA
- noting that yes you don't measure like this normally, I'm just making sure I'm getting
readings from that fan and none of the other crazy fans on this machine.
It never really turns off at all, during a normal print at temperatures of 200 to 210,
with the bed at 60.
I want to be pretty clear here, I've had this machine over a year, and I've never heard
the psu fan turn off or slow down during a print.
This test is really to see if it will when it's up in the air, and largely to pretend
I'm doing proper science.
So I printed out this cover, and I put it on.
It's actually really cool, it covers the live bits of the power supply and leaves the rest
open, including the vents.
You use all the existing screws, and you actually get a couple of spares too.
The cable management is a nice touch but it's worth noting that you will likely need to
raise the feet a bit after you do this - something I advocate anyway as you'll get more airflow
into the bottom.
Back onto my "don't try this at home" test rig.
I was standing here the whole time ready to catch the printer, don't worry, this was not
as bad as it looks.
I ran it for a while and thought nothing had changed, but then.....
I let it run for a while longer and the fan kicked back in.
It was my experience that the fan is still on more than it's off.
But that's an interesting outcome isn't it.
I haven't yet run extensive tests with it not up in the air so that could be interesting,
it may be that some kind of ducting or maybe relocating the psu might allow the fan to
run even less.
I think it's probably fine as is, for me though.
So what are we to conclude from this?
Well.
I'm not sure.
Why did creality block the vents on the steve?
If it seems to hinder the cooling, which it certainly seems to, then is there another
motive?
Is it a simple mistake that nobody noticed because it doesn't fail?
I struggle most to understand why they did this, because this chunk of metal effectively
doesn't need to exist, if you look at the ender 3 you can see they were happy with the
psu just totally out there for anyone to touch, with just this cover.
So why add to the cost, this isn't a small chunk of metal.
But if you have any ideas or just want to make exasperated noises then please put it
in the comments.
I will be interested to see your take on this!
I will see you next time!